The developers of the open source, Amiga-inspired Syllable operating system have chalked up a new release, releasing version 0.6.7. Rohan Pearce at Techworld caught up with lead developer Kaj de Vos for a chat about what's new and the team's future plans. Last year OSNews posted a longer interview with him about the background of the project, also performed by Pearce.

Aren't the Amiga comparisons quite misleading? Syllable bears far more API similarity to BeOS, from what I renember. Uses the same Handler Message pattern, as well as servers (services) for many of the main functions (app server, is one that springs to mind.) As I remember it, Kutr Skaun stated that Atheos was originally inspired by AmigaOS, but that it had gone through a dramatic refactor since initial release.

Being inspired by BeOS doesn't preclude being inspired by Amiga OS. AtheOS started out as an Amiga OS clone but was then refactored to do more, so it was still Amiga inspired.

The lower levels of Syllable/AtheOS are most directly Amiga influenced, particularly the kernel. The higher levels in user space are indeed BeOS inspired, particularly the AppServer and the application programming API. Around those skeletons is a lot more influence from Unix, POSIX, Linux, GNU and other third-party open source.

BeOS itself was highly Amiga inspired. It was designed by people who left Apple because Apple had failed to create an answer to the Amiga. Apple had even hired Carl Sassenrath, the creator of the Amiga OS kernel, to develop a new kernel for them, which would have been quite like the later BeOS and Syllable kernels, but was canceled because it couldn't be compatible with existing Mac software.

Another way to look at it is that we always wanted Syllable to be a modern Amiga successor. Carl Sassenrath went on to design the REBOL programming language, which was meant as the foundation for a new operating system generation. We are following that development line to its conclusion in the Red language.

BeOS is not really Amiga related - not lie you imply. All of the early engineers were either ex-Apple (Sakoman, Erich Ringewald, Bob Herold) or Mac programmers (Benoit Schillings.) they might have taken queues, but most of the early BeOS was built ground up using previous experience at Apple (the Pink project and Talient) and the Dragon book.

As I said with AtheOS, I read tat Kurt had originally been inspired by te Amiga, but that refactoring had left that pretty far from the view of the average Applications programmer.

Being inspired by BeOS doesn't preclude being inspired by Amiga OS. AtheOS started out as an Amiga OS clone but was then refactored to do more, so it was still Amiga inspired.

Just to address this directly - the Amiga "influence" is a dim distant relic. The BeOS influence is the core of the native API, and much of the subsystem design. Yet Amiga gets rolled out on a regular basis. It's misleading. ReactOS is an OS inspired by NT. GNU/Linux is inspired by UNIX. AROS is an OS inspired by AmigaOS, as was MorphOS. Syllable is an OS kernel that has a giant glob of API and subsystems inspired by BeOS (though Kurt often tried to deny that fact) The rest, the Amiga, is all cosmetic and potentially extremely low level. Describing Syllable as being Amiga inspired over the other strong influences seems very self serving to me.